


Breathe, Desperately

by crimsonkitty



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dissociation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-25 19:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9840971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonkitty/pseuds/crimsonkitty
Summary: At the center of it, two boys dressed in black, hands clutched tightly together.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I won't tell you how long this took me to finish or how good it felt when I did. I will tell you that the imagery of this fic wouldn't leave me alone for months. I will also tell you that I find writing Gai to be very very difficult. So we'll see how this turns out. Thanks to Alex for looking this over. Title from a song by From Indian Lakes of the same name. Dedicated to Aya, as always.

The Sandaime’s voice is clear and strong, an honest and heartfelt message about grief and love and protecting one’s home. His own wife dead in the attack and here he stands, tall in front of the Hokage memorial. A bowed back straightened with age instead of broken.

Konoha lays in ruins around them. Those that can be spared are at the service but even so, less than half of the survivors are present. Some working through night after night at the makeshift hospital. Some still searching for those trapped under rubble. Some only in desperate refusal of reality. 

At the center of it, two boys dressed in black, hands clutched tightly together.

There are no tears between them. Nothing but the press of palms. 

Gai does not know how to mourn for a home that is so irrevocably changed. For it to be gone and still present. The silence of it sits deep in his chest. Extends through his arms and outwards. 

Kakashi only stares into the dirt, letting the words of mourning slip over him like rain. His mouth parted without breath. 

Gai thinks Kakashi would slip quietly out of his own body if their hands weren’t a tether lashing them to the living. 

The living.

There are glances in their direction. There are always glances in Kakashi’s direction. But no one approaches. No one speaks. No one wants to see. 

Gai is the only one who feels the faint tremor.

The split knuckles, the straining of bones and sinew.

You are present. You are here.

Words that will go unheard.

Instead, he pays no mind to the creaking of bones in his own hand. Listens, instead, for the pulsing of another heartbeat against his. Just to be sure. 

The ceremony ends in silence. Sarutobi walks purposefully away. The living, more slowly. Edging their way carefully around the eye at the center. One small nudge would send anyone stumbling into the storm alone. 

And so the eye is all that's left when the rain begins. 

It is soft and encompassing. Warm in the face of the approaching tide.

Gai raises his head to the sky. Closes his eyes. He imagines the flowers that will bloom tomorrow. The birds that will sing. 

“Why,” a voice croaks next to him. 

Why did this happen. Why is it raining. Why does it hurt. Why. 

“Why are you here.” 

Because you deserve to see spring again. 

Because Gai can no longer answer these questions.

“To pay my respects.”

He keeps his eyes ahead, takes in the scope of the monument, dwarfing them against a backdrop no longer burning. At the end, a stern face used to smiling.

He can’t help the small gasp when his hand is freed, unmoored and caught off guard. He pulls it to him, does not unbend his fingers, as a grin plasters itself across his face. A certainty that it will not be noticed. 

Instead, Gai finds Kakashi looking at him. Looking at the hand cradled against his chest, purple and bruised and clearly broken. 

When was the last time Kakashi looked at him. 

The single eye is still dark. Still grey in the light and black in the cold. The same that has looked back at him for so many years and in every possible way. 

And then it’s gone. Turned away from Gai toward some point in the distance that Gai could never hope to see. 

“We’re here, Gai,” Kakashi says. A step closer. He blurs around the edges. 

Gai can only acknowledge the truth of it. 

“Yes.” 

_We're here._

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [kaqueershi](http://kaqueershi.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if you wanna say hi.


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